Over on busandtrainuser.com Roger French has written a really good piece entitled 'The ticket office closure con' where he discusses in detail the government's plan to shut ticket offices at railway stations.
The article, with (currently) 75 comments, is well worth a read.
And one bit of text stuck with me. Roger writes 'A leading rail ticket retailer quotes there are 2,822 ticket types with 901 unique ticket names, 655 restriction codes and 1,288 route codes in the rail ticketing system'.
Just have a re-read of those figures and see if you can get your head around them. It's nigh on impossible to think those numbers can be justified in any way, shape, or form.
But just as the British public wants (needs?) their two main transport systems to be nice and simple, those involved seem determined to make using them not nice and so very complicated.
Why do they have to be like that? Even when bus companies simplify their ticket options, they're happy to rob Peter to pay Paul. Some tickets may disappear, but they're quickly replaced with something equally as confusing in the customer's eyes (not theirs).
Overall, so many things with public transport are not user-friendly and/or products of yesteryear. Apps, websites, timetables, abbreviations, language etc all struggle to hit the mark and could do with a massive root and branch overhaul of how they work.
Don't agree? Sit and watch customers interact with everything your product has to offer and see if they struggle or agree it is as simple as you think.
People jump in their cars without even pausing for breath. Public transport has a long way to go to catch up.
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